Norah News: Birthday Party

We had Norah's birthday party this past weekend.  Since she's been talking about it since August, and it's somewhat of a milestone birthday, we figured we'd go big, and have the party outside the house somewhere.  We've been to a LOT of birthday's recently, and I was looking for something a little different, a little more Norah... well, I found it, and then some! 

We had a Ballerina Tea Party at a local dance studio, which also happens to be in a really neat old Mill building.  We had a total of about 15 kids, and from what I can tell - everyone had a great time.  

Here's the star of the show, waiting to greet her guests

Tea cups and cupcakes at the ready!

A few warm up moves...

Norah in action!

Ta-dah!

Showing Roddie how to get truly prepared...

The girls begin to arrive, and though most were in dance attire, you can never really have enough accessories

Once everyone arrived, we started with a story, Angelina Ballerina no less!

The girls, and Liam were loving the story

Then, we moved on to a dance lesson 

Most everyone danced up a storm

Courtney was our smallest ballerina

Even the moms enjoyed the show!

Norah, shy as ever, really hated the spotlight

Next we moved on to the tea party.  Norah had a special seat and a special cupcake

Drinking tea takes practice..

The whole gang at high tea, including one superhero

After tea, we moved on to a craft project, followed by the gift opening.  I'm mixed on opening gifts at parties especially for really little kids, but I think by 5 they understand the idea of giving gifts.  Anyway, Norah was (more or less) gracious about the gifts, though we felt a little strange hauling more than a dozen pink packages out to the van.

The whole gang!

 Lastly, here's a group picture of all the kids.  That's (L-R) Lauren C, Haley, Cassandra, Erin D, Allie, Riya, Norah, Erin C, Lauren K, Liam and Samantha.  On the floor there's Roddie, Savannah, Julia and Elsa.  We could not have been happier with how things went.  It was very easy for us and just the right thing for Norah and her crowd.